A few days ago, sitting with some friends at a restaurant, we were chatting about this and that when there came up the subject of how traveling by plane has become crowded and uncomfortable. One of my friends, sitting near me, said, "and, you know, they will also make you travel in the plane while standing up!" I thought she was joking, but I soon realized that she wasn't. She really believed that airlines were planning to transform planes into winged subway cars.

At this point, I made my mistake for the day (I seem to have a ticket book for social faux pas, sometimes I think I have to punch at least one every day). I told her that the story of people standing up in planes is an obvious legend; a publicity stunt destined to create interest in the airline creating it. I added that I am always surprised that people fall so easily for this kind of hoaxes. As you may imagine, that was a mistake. She stiffened up and she said, angrily, that she was sure it was true. I tried to remedy as I could, but it was too late. I think she went back home, later on, still angry at me and still convinced that in her next plane trip she was going to fly standing up, probably holding a handle hanging from the ceiling. That was worth at least five faux pas tickets punched.

Now, this friend of mine is blond haired, but she is no dumb blonde. She is a lawyer in her early 50s, by all means an intelligent person who, in her job, wouldn't be easy to fool. But she is not exceptional in falling in the legend trap. I have more examples and surely everyone of us has had some similar experience. Normal, intelligent people who completely fall for legends that are plainly absurd. It is what I called the "Anti-Cassandra effect;" believing the unbelievable.

The legend of standing up flights is basically harmless; just like the several others surrounding Ryanair. Possibly, the idea is that passengers will feel privileged when they board the plane and they discover that they actually have a seat! The problem is, obviously, when the same disconnect with reality comes for subjects that involve real danger. Climate change is a classic example and there you find the most absurd legends taking hold with incredible strength. You know the examples: Greenland was ice-free at the time of the Vikings, Mars and Jupiter are warming up, in the 1970s they said an ice age would come, scientists have confessed of having falsified the data, and many more.

Now, imagine that you hear one of these climate legends told to you by one of your friends who believes that it is true. How would you react? Simply telling him or her that it is a legend and that it is obviously false wouldn't work. The reaction would be, most likely, the same that my friend had for the legend of standing up flights. So, I think that with climate legends we (intended as scientists and professionals) have made the same mistake. It is not enough to tell people that their beliefs on climate are incompatible with physical reality. Doing that just causes them to get angry and retreat even deeper into their beliefs. Scientists, indeed, seem to have been able to accumulate a huge number of faux pas tickets punched in their attempts to convey the message that climate change is real and that it is urgent to do something about it.

But how do we manage to tell people that climate legends are legends without hurting their sensitivity? With a friend, maybe you can gently coach him or her into learning something more about climate. But dealing with the press and the Web is much more difficult - you surely have experience on what happens when the discussion heats up. So, what to do? Maybe we should ask to Ryanair's PR agency. Or does anyone have suggestions?

Hello! This is Ugo Bardi - I tend to overextend myself on the Web by writing a lot of stuff. Presently, my blog in English is titled "Cassandra's Legacy". In English, I have another blog a little more esoteric, titled Chimeras. The first is dedicated to sustainability, the second to mythology, history, and art. See also my latest book, "The Seneca Effect," Springer 2017.

My suggestion: laugh uncontrollably. Then act as if it's the stupidest thing you've ever heard and tell him "Yeah, suuuure! Go to get proof. I won't hold my breath". People are much more likely to change their minds if they are ridiculed than if you just disagree with them. "How could you be so fricken stupid to believe that nonsense?" is much more effective than saying "Actually, that's a myth". 'Cos they can say "No it isn't". "no it isn't" doesn't work if your response is to giggle and point at the loony who believes something that ridiculous.

The strategy may depend on the target. To the press, they need to be ridiculized so the next time they don't arise the same stupid points. On the web and with friends, one could pretend to consider the arguments and try to follow the line of reasoning, and suddenly say: "But..." and then expose some known fact (which must be presented from different sources, as an unvoidable truth - well, that it is) which completely contradicts the whole reasoning.

Anyway, there's no silver bullet for this. At the end, the strategies of denial just search to create doubt (well, FUD), not to win the debate.

Well, as many legends, the one of stand-up flights is not completely disconnected from reality! People notice that all airlines tend to stack them, and indeed the cost per passenger is almost inversely propotionnal to the number of people you push into the plane!

In detail: on a flight as those by Ryanair, the fuel consumption of one person is approximately 0.3 * (mass you bring into the plane, seat included / mass the average economy traveller brings) + 0.7 * (space you take / space the average traveller takes). Fuel is roughly half the cost, and the sensitivity of the other half of the costs to the space each passenger takes should not be very different from - 0.7 too. So the global sensitivity of the cost to the space is approximately -0.7, and this won't change much with rising fuel prices.

Here there are two possibilities: you can assume that flying is "conspicuous consumption", in which case the pressure on space aboard planes is given by the sensitivity, not the cost of space, so that things won't change with high fuel prices. Or you can think that people take the plane on a more reasonable basis, in which case the pressure on space is the sensitivity times the total cost. In this case the space per person will diminish with higher fuel prices, if there's enough competition among the airlines (if there are only two or three airlines eating the cake, they don't want to diminish its size).

Well, my guess is that conspicuous consumption is almost always involved! But sometimes it's different: for instance people who migrated, who occasionnaly visit their family back home, and are not that wealthy. Will we see airlines trying to offer them ultra-low-cost flights? I don't think so, but this is not impossible!

Anyway, ridicule has a strong power indeed, but you need a lot of practice before you master it!

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog deals with the future of humankind in view of such things as the overexploitation of natural resourecs and the effects of global warming. It is a bit catastrophistic, I know, but, after all, the ancient prophetess, Cassandra (above in a painting by Evelyn de Morgan) turned out to have been right!

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Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Chimeras: another blog by UB

Another blog by Ugo Bardi; it is dedicated to art, myths, literature, and history with a special attention to ancient monsters and deities.

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated: no insults, no hate, no trolls. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it